Objectives of studying Transnational History

The
main objective of transnational and comparative studies in history is twofold:
to overcome the tendency of national historiographies, first, to portray their
historical experience as a unique product of a chosen people and to regard “the
Other” as exotic or alien; and second, to portray certain societies and regions
as intellectual and economic colonies of the West.

In a world marked by growing
concern about processes of globalization, inter-cultural communication, the
disintegration of states, new supranational institutions and the
reconfiguration of national boundaries, the national parameters which have
traditionally dominated historical investigation increasingly prove to be
inappropriate to answer the intellectual and political questions with which the
discipline is now confronted.

These challenges require a substantial
reorientation of historical research within a transnational perspective,
affecting the subject of historical research itself, the methodological
framework of the discipline and the training of historians.

Historians
are far from regarding globalisation as a recent historical phenomenon. Social
theorists as well as historians often associate the experience of modernity
since the end of the Middle Ages with an increased level of globalisation in
human and institutional transactions. However, the ancient and medieval worlds
were characterised by similar levels of economic, political and cultural
exchange.

Historians tend to agree that in today’s world the concept of
globalization describes a process with many historical precedents and which
under certain circumstances is characteristic of most human societies in
history, to the extent that it has even been accepted by some scientists as an
anthropological condition of human life.

Therefore, if the process of
globalisation has played an important role in public debate during the past two
decades, this mostly regards the scale, quality and perception of globalizing
processes in cultural communication, economic activity and politics.

This new
scale and quality of the process has had a profound effect on politics, the
economy and culture all over the globe, in an inescapable way.

Our concept of nation
states in history has been profoundly marked by these debates, leading to a
re-examination of the historical relationship between individual states and the
wider world and the ways in which historians study this relationship.